Diversion
by Black Scribler
Summary: Tom reads a comics, and the familiar story takes a diversion.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1: The Moment of Choice

Tom rarely, if ever, felt any rage or anger, or any kind of strong, powerful emotion.

Instead his heart was full of cold violence, like the heart of any other child in the orphanage aspiring to climb in the food chain, both that of the orphanage and that of the world waiting for him outside.

The only time there had been rage in Tom's heart had been the first time he had gotten raped, and had had to face the fact that he had been far from the top of the food chain, even with his powers.

Upon arriving to the orphanage, Henry the new kid had started bullying campaign to assert himself as fast as possible as the top dog among his peers. Tom had to respond accordingly, or else would suffer loosing his hard-worked-for place at the top.

Tom hated acting with haste. He had to give Henry the real lesson, to make him the example to others. He came to his thinking place, the reading room.

Some benefactor had, as accompaniment to the financial donation, also given a collection of comics from across the pond. These were different from the British ones he had read before and which were aimed at juvenile audience, these comics had complex story and moral message, and were meant for broader audience. One title attracted his attention: "Superman".

Inside this comics was the subject which greatly touched the interest and the heart of Tom Riddle: abandoned orphan, with secret powers, turning to hero. The orphan who was abandoned, not because unwanted, but because that had been the only way for his parents to save his life.

And that had brought rage into the heart of Tom Riddle, because for the first time he had felt true burden of the prison which the cold violence had been to him, and he wanted to break it, he wanted to become a hero.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2: First Lessons and the Birth

He had known right away what would be the consequences of his choice. After all, he himself had once followed the same behavioural pattern as his 'enemies'. Which was why he had welcomed what had happened. Tom had felt he first had to atone for all evil he had done in the name of his former weakness. Tom now understood that had he remained hiding in cold violence, he would had done throughout his life many terrible deeds of evil.

The main reason Tom had accepted to shut himself in cold violence in the first place had been to use it as a shield against the harsh reality of life in the orphanage and on the streets.

Now he understood that this 'shield' had also been a prison to his natural powers, and that this 'shield' had made him weak and a rape victim.

Getting out of the 'prison' had been an 'eye-opener', or more like an 'opener-of-all-his-senses' far beyond average human capacities: he could see a caterpillar in the vegetation which was miles away and hear the noise of it munching on the said vegetation, the world was full of new colours, sounds and smells.

He had been able to tell the time they had chosen to implement their plan as the thought flashes he would get every time he would cross eyes with Henry, had been getting more accurate and intense with hatred they had been conveying.

Those fools had been thinking they had ambushed him in that secluded clearing in the forest by the orphanage, when in fact he had chosen that day and that moment.

Henry and Henry's goons (former Tom's goons) had been revelling in anticipation of the pain and the injuries they had been looking forward to do to him.

He had let them subdue him and they had started hitting. The pain of the blows had been nothing compared to the pain he would get looking into Henry's eyes: what they had been doing to him had been the same he had intended to do to Henry, and he had been able to see Henry's prison of cold violence and the miserable life he would lead. He had started to feel the pain of Henry's emotions, his desire to hurt Tom, his own rage at what he had suffered at his previous orphanage.

Henry's rage had created a feedback circuit with Tom's rage and the pain of it all had been running like lightning through Tom's every cell and he had reached for help to the well of warm energy inside him, the energy which had been a bit annoyed with Tom for shutting it and himself out, but had been now bouncing with happiness that it hadn't been forgotten by Tom.

Tears had appeared in the corner of his eyes and they had started hitting harder and their words getting more insulting.

They had noticed that the things had not been going in the direction they had intended, when one goon cried in pain holding his hurting hand as if he had just hit a wall. It had been as if the shadows of the forest had become alive and the clearing in the forest had started to get filled with supernatural pressure.

Tom had screamed and some unholy force had blown off of their feet his assailants.

They had run away in fear screaming words like 'freak' and 'monster'.

Tom had got back to his feet.

He was now able to see that the same warm energy inside him had been everywhere around, and he basked in the warmth of this energy, especially the one coming from the sun itself and mixed with its light.

Tom now understood that he had never been and never would be alone or helpless.

His injuries healed instantly.

His every cell was now saturated with the warm energy. He inhaled and looked up, and noticed how unusually beautiful and blue the summer sky had been. He leaped and took off in the supersonic flight.

At that particular moment, inside the Ministry of Magic, Department of Magical Law Enforcement, the person on duty at the Improper Use of Magic Office raised the alarm as sparks and burning smell appeared on several of their equipement.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3: The Old Man

Energy fields manipulation. Those were the terms which seemed to best describe his root ability from which stemmed all his other abilities.

For the time being his successful experiments were limited to electromagnetic fields and those others fields.

Like electromagnetic radiations, the other radiations were everywhere. However, soaking his body in this energy allowed him to enhance his normal capacities: his mind and body were faster and stronger; and what's more, it seemed that only his imagination was limit to what this energy allowed him to do (well, his imagination and putting necessary time and effort to figure out how to use the energy to do his bidding). He suspected that was why he was able to talk to snakes in the first place.

The first step of his plan was to learn and train.

At the start of his hero career the everyday thugs would certainly be surprised by his abilities and easy to fight, but he also needed to be ready to fight the masterminds who would hide in shadows and search for his weak points and use the latest technologies and science to exploit those weak points. Therefore, it was primordial that he too knows all about latest discoveries and how the world around him evolved, and to put every effort in order to always keep pushing his limits.

He had used his accelerated mind to read all books in the orphanage's library, in the school's library and in the local public library. There had been some about physical training and he had used that to establish his training program – obstacle course and stretching, pushing and lifting of wagons at an abandoned rail station. Tom had also noticed the exercises which the school's Chinese cook had been doing regularly, and when asked he explained to Tom that he had been doing them to maintain good energy flow in his body, and Tom had started doing the same.

It has been almost a year from his first flight, and he had made tremendous progress and was now able to maintain Superman-level abilities (as described in the comics) without thinking.

The second step of his plan had been to become a forensic expert for the Scotland Yard (he preferred it to the choice of Clark Kent), which would helped him be close to science community and close to police work.

Unfortunately, this carefully planed step had gone down the drain after his meeting with Professor Albus Dumbledore. Well, at least he now knew that the other energy fields are called magic and that there was a hidden culture which for centuries had been developing use of magic, although it seemed he had been the first one to be able to use magic instinctively and without a designed tool (which they called a wand).

…...

It was a pleasant June afternoon, particularly for Scottish climate. Professor Dumbeldore was about to have his tea and was pondering about the meeting he had previously that day. Like every year after the students would leave for the summer, it was the time for the Headmaster's Deputy to deliver the admission letters to future students who were muggle-born or raised without knowledge of magic.

That day he had delivered his admission letter to Tom Riddle, and indeed a riddle this young man seemed to be.

Tom had talked about knowing to be different from others, and that he was able to move things without touching.

Dumbledore had an inkling that Tom had been greatly downplaying his abilities. That he was able to levitate in controlled manner without a wand reminded Dumbledore greatly of Ariana.

There had been several occurrences of pre-Hogwarts children being able to use magic in controlled manner, mostly for levitation. They seemed to be the next evolutionary step of magical humans. Tom was the first one to be lucky enough not to suffer from some serious magical disease.

Advice from Newton Scamander would be very useful.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4: The Legend Begins

After some funny reaction of the Hat admiring Tom's ambition, it sorted him into Slytherin, thus condemning an unsuspecting muggle-born, for that is what Tom Riddle essentially was, to seven-year imprisonment in the bastion of blood-purists and conservatives; or so it seemed.

It is with this phrase that Elphias Doge and Bathilda Bagshot describe the first steps of Tom Riddle in Hogwarts, in their jointly written biography masterpiece (an impressive slab comparable to Churchill's work about the World War 2) of the one who is considered the founder of modern magic.

When Professor Dumbledore had arrived to take him to the hidden magical part of London, so that he could get all his school supplies, Tom had greeted the Professor with the handshake. The moment they had made contact Tom's mind had received surge of various snippets of Dumbledore's painful past and of Dumbledore's efforts to put an end to Grindelwald's crimes. That had been the first time something like that had happened to Tom, and he had taken it as the sign of going in the right direction, that working with/for Dumbledore would allow him to show how powerful he can be. ( _Read the previous paragraph while listening to Split/Unbreakable Visions theme._ )

As Tom was approaching the Slytherin table, his heart was full of joy: he was home. He could see a bunch of children and greenhorns trying to put on their most menacing faces, just like the kids from the orphanage. There were a few "mudblood" that came his way, too. One thing was clear to Tom: he had lot to learn and had to learn it fast. Hogwarts was just the tip of the iceberg, he had entered a hidden community which had been doing so for centuries. They had their rules and had developed their own technologies how to use the gift of magic, and they didn't like newcomers. Tom had to quickly and efficiently infiltrate the social network of Slytherin in order to gather the needed knowledge and information, create his own relational network, and create a good public persona behind which he could easily hide his hero alter-ego. And so, he decided to be a bookworm and a scholar.

At that particular moment, young Tom Riddle had no inkling that this particular choice would turn him into an object of worship of this hidden community and to lesser extent in the mundane world. At that moment, Tom Riddle had absolutely no clue what so ever that on May 2, 1998 he would be the guest of honour of the new Ministry grand-opening (the date was chosen so to commemorate the 60 years since he had entered the magical community), and that fruits of his collaboration with Dumbledore and Flamel as "bookworm" Tom Riddle would earn him a monumental 10-meter-high statue in the grandiose hall of the said Ministry (which had replaced the Fountain of Magical Brethren) and overshadow in public eye his achievements as hero.

…...

"Merlin's balls" mumbled Albus Dumbledore into his beard. And again those words were associated with something Tom Riddle had done. In fact, those words were pronounced so many times since he had met the young man, that Dumbledore was starting to suspect that Tom Riddle is indeed a product of the said balls.

It had started that day when Tom had picked his wand for the first time at the Olivander's (a piece of yew with the first feather Fawkes had given him). The magical cord that is usually heard when a wand is bonding with the owner, had not come only from the wand, but also from Tom himself. And it had been so monumental and majestic it had reminded Albus of Also Sprach Zarathustra.

This time Albus' reaction was provoked by how Tom Riddle was casting his spells. At first he would do just the regular movement until he mastered it. Then to this regular movement a "dancing" (as other students would call it mockingly) was added. What beginning students ignored is the fact that this "dancing" had been a technique invented by Chinese wizards to improve the quality of their spells. However, this dancing had never become a widely used technique as it required a very developed sense of the magical flows through the body of the caster and how they interacted with the flow of magic through the wand. This sense was something wizards and witches managed to acquire only late in their life (if ever). And here was Tom Riddle, a first-year, using very efficiently this difficult technique.

It was as if Tom Riddle could see magic (and here Albus laughed at himself for advancing such an absurd hypothesis).


End file.
